Flying Saucer Attack

Formed in Bristol, England during 1992, the secretive avant-noise space-rock endeavor known as Flying Saucer Attack centered on the duo of singer/guitarists David Pearce and Rachel Brook. Both had departed Lynda's Strange Vacation to create FSA as a vehicle for their home-recording experiments, maintaining a strict D.I.Y. approach that avoided professional studios whenever feasible. Krautrock, folk, and dream pop shaped their sound, which surfaced first through the single “Soaring High” and then the self-titled 1993 debut album, whose narcoleptic vocals and shapeless songs lay submerged beneath thick, organic layers of feedback. Early output appeared on their own FSA Records in limited vinyl pressings wrapped in handmade sleeves. Although the pair favored vinyl and resisted compact discs, mounting demand prompted them to allow CD editions, beginning with VHF’s American pressing of the initial long-player.

Domino in the U.K. issued Distance, a 1994 anthology of atmospheric singles and unreleased tracks, after FSA signed with the label. On the American side, Drag City introduced Further in 1995, an album whose hypnotic guitar textures acquired an unusually pastoral character. Later that year Chorus, another collection of singles, arrived alongside an announcement that the group’s first chapter had closed. The 1996 releases Distant Station—a Tele:Funken album built from FSA samples and credited jointly—and In Search of Spaces, a fifty-minute noisy assemblage of live material, preceded 1997’s New Lands, the initial statement of the project now operating as Pearce’s solo venture centered on sampling. Brook meanwhile concentrated on her own group Movietone.

After New Lands and the 7-inch “Coming Home,” FSA departed Domino and revived FSA Records to release Mirror in 2000. That album juxtaposed the project’s most restrained, folk-oriented pieces with distorted drum’n’bass passages reminiscent of Third Eye Foundation, whose Matt Elliott had appeared on the debut. Pearce stopped producing new FSA music yet continued to issue limited archival sets, among them a split CD with Main and White Winged Moth in the Mort Aux Vaches series, the 2003 CD-R P.A. Blues, and the 2012 LP Heartbeat/Complete. He also joined Jessica Bailiff for the one-off duo Clear Horizon, whose self-titled album appeared on Kranky in 2003; Bailiff additionally contributed guitar to the track “Flying Saucer Attack” on Odd Nosdam’s 2005 Anticon release Burner. Following a fifteen-year absence, Pearce revived Flying Saucer Attack and returned to Domino and Drag City for the full-length Instrumentals 2015.